30 September 2012 Sydney to San Diego

Airports, Airports, Airports

Today was mostly about getting from A to B via LAX. Door to door this worked out at just under 24 hours and after a sleepless night, and then a fairly sleepless flight it was a struggle to stay awake for the long transit in Los Angeles.

Qantas does look after its passengers on long haul flights with meals, snacks including mango ice cream and pizza, a self-service snack bar and on demand movies which are now available as soon as you are seated but it was hard to sleep because I had prebooked to sit at the rear of the 747 where there is just an aisle and window seat with extra space because the window seat. These use to be the best seats in economy but a warning to those who like these rear side rows - Qantas has recently been upgrading these planes which unfortunately mean that these rows of two seats now have a support in the middle of the base of each seat, meaning there is no footrest for the passenger sitting behind, i.e. me, and you can’t store a bag under the seat either.   

When we landed in Los Angeles I couldn’t believe the lack of lines at the immigration counters. In the past I have missed connecting flights because of the long queues and waits to reach the immigration counter but today there were only 6 people in front of me – and some other counter lines had less.

Who needs to win the lottery – own an airport instead! I thought Sydney was expensive but food and beverages are even more costly at LAX. One good thing is that both airports offer free WiFi which helped to pass the time.

My flight down to San Diego was on a codeshare with American Eagle so I had to transfer from the American Airlines terminal to the American Eagle terminal via shuttle bus which travelled parallel to the runway – which made for some interesting close up views of aircraft.

Both the shuttle I was in and this plane were on the move!

Finally I arrived in San Diego and settled into my hotel. The big news here is the heatwave that San Diego has been having so as hotel room faces west it was quite warm when I checked in, making it hard to relax after the long flights until it had cooled down. I had a great view of the sunset though!

Home Sweet Home - for 4 nights anyway